DEAR EDITOR:

Free will. There is a very basic meaning that people need to understand and many do not. What is it exactly? Just as laws can be passed that are not right — making it a crime to give people water standing in line to vote, for example. The dictionary has definitions that are not quite right or even close to right. Free will is one. Free will, noun, is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.

This is one definition that really is false. It is basically an anarchy definition of free will. It is false because it says “the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” Being able to “act” means then ignoring anyone else’s acting on their free will. Free will is simple. For intelligent beings it is being able to choose. The ability to carry out that choice is different. We may not always like our choices because others, who choose and have the ability to restrict others, make them limited. They do not respect other’s free will.

This is what has been going on for as long as people have been “civilized.” People try to make their own free will the law. Religions did this, at first, and were very successful at it, for the most part. A few religious leaders with the “ability” to carry out their free will over others have caused most of the problems for humanity. The idea of rights, as well, has been perverted. There are different rights. There are individual rights and society’s rights. There are no God-given rights because God gave us all free will to decide what those rights are within ourselves and our societies. We decide what our individual rights are and what our society’s rights are.

The only way we can do that is by the democratic process of voting. Understanding that basic most important right we give to each other, which is voting. That is how we hear each other in a society. To go after that right is a violation of the respect of free will.

Nothing is more important than understanding and respecting free will. Those who do not believe in free will are doomed and being used by those with free will who are spreading that lie. Free will is what created the universe. Matter freely went and collected throughout the universe to create what we now see and understand to be the universe. Matter did this within what we call laws of physics — creating the stars, planets and us. Learn the difference between matter, free will and life’s free will. Republicans don’t respect free will.

LEIF DAMSTOFT

Warren